Saturday, January 26, 2013

A dream I had

(From Friday, not this morning)

I went to a camp where other people my age and with similar interests gathered for the weekend (if anyone knows of a real place like this, please send details). We all stayed in cabins, which were actually small, cabin-like houses. The cabins were laid out in a neighborhood-style grid on a parcel approximately the size of a high school campus. The leader of the camp was a charismatic man who resembled Leonard Maltin.

Of all the people there, I knew only one, a friend and former co-worker in Missouri. At some point I made a new group of friends — three guys and a girl. They weren't there for quite the same reason as I was — apparently we fell into unspecified micro-interest categories — but I really wanted to fit in, because I saw what I wanted to be in them.

So with my real-life friend elsewhere and some downtime, my group said that our leader had something cool in his cabin — what, I don't know. Knowing that he wouldn't be there, I decided that we should go see it. So we did.

After making our way through a thrilling obstacle course, we found the leader's cabin unlocked and walked inside. It's as if he was there, but he wasn't; the TV was blaring, the lights were on and food was out. We proceeded to run around the inside of the cabin, jumping over the bed and skimming the top of dressers, at times screaming, "HARDCORE PARKOUR!!" We did no damage and took nothing. Then we left.

As we walked out the door, the leader suddenly confronted us.

"What were you doing in there?" he asked angrily.

"Oh, sorry about that," I replied without skipping a beat. "We were waiting for [my friend] to come back and thought that was her cabin."

"Well, I saw video surveillance that shows you were doing parkour in there," he retorted. That's when we remembered that every cabin had a security cam. What was up with that, anyway?

"We realized right away that it was yours," I said. "But we felt like it would be suspicious if we just left right away. So we decided to pass some time in there until you came back." Nice save. There was some truth to it, in the sense that we were waiting for my friend to come back. I sold it.

He looked at me for a moment. "Uh-huh," he muttered before flashing his trademark Maltin smile and walking off.

Suddenly, we all realized that we weren't in a fun and refreshing camp — we were in a horrifying cult. As the realization came into focus, we saw a vision of Dear Leader's smile superimposed over an orange-and-yellow pamphlet — the recruiting brochure.

"I think we should get out of here," I said to my friends. They looked at me warily and walked away. I got a tremendously uneasy feeling.

Later, I dreamt that a recurring dream hangout from my days in Springfield — a sort of idea mall and workout center — was condemned and being torn down.